“Poeta nascitur, non fit!—­the poet’s nasty and not fit.  Zut!  Boum-boum!  Get along, old fellow, or we’ll never see the pretty ladies of Pride’s this blooming day!”

There was a shorter cut by a spotted trail, and when he saw the first blaze glimmering through the leaves he steered his horse toward it.  The sound of voices came distantly from the wooded heights above—­far laughter, the faint aroma of a wood fire; no doubt some picnickers—­trespassing as usual, but that was Mrs. Ascott’s affair.

A little later, far below him, he caught a glimpse of a white gown among the trees.  There was a spring down there somewhere in that thicket of silver birches; probably one of the trespassers was drinking.  So, idly curious, he rode that way, his horse making no sound on the thick moss.

“If she’s ornamental,” he said to himself, “I’ll linger to point out the sin of trespassing; that is if she is sufficiently ornamental—­”

His horse stepped on a dead branch which cracked; the girl in white, who had been looking out through the birch-trees across the valley, turned her head.

They recognised each other even at that distance; he uttered a low exclamation of satisfaction, sprang from his saddle, and led his horse down among the mossy rocks of the water-course to the shelf of rock overhanging the ravine where she stood as motionless as one of the silver saplings.

“Virginia,” he said, humorously abashed, “shall I say I am glad to see you, and how d’you do, and offer you my hand?—­or had I better not?”

He thought she meant to answer; perhaps she meant to, but found no voice at her disposal.

He dropped his bridle over a branch and, drawing off his gloves, walked up to where she was standing.

“I knew you were at Pride’s Hall,” he said; “I’m aware, also, that nobody there either expected or wished to see me.  But I wanted to see you; and little things of that sort couldn’t keep me away.  Where are the others?”

She strove twice to answer him, then turned abruptly, steadying herself against a birch-tree with one arm.

“Where are the others, Virginia?” he asked gently.

“On the rocks beyond.”

“Picnicking?”

“Yes.”

“How charming!” he said; “as though one couldn’t see enough country out of one’s windows every minute in the year.  But you can’t tell where sentiment will crop up; some people don’t object to chasing ants off the dishes and fishing sticks out of the milk.  I do....  It’s rather fortunate I found you alone:  saves a frigid reception and cruel comments after I’m gone....  After I’m gone, Virginia.”

He seated himself where the sunlight fell agreeably and looked off over the valley.  A shrunken river ran below—­a mere thread of life through its own stony skeleton—­a mockery of what it once had been before the white-hided things on two legs had cut the forests from the hills and killed its cool mossy sources in their channels.  The crushers of pulp and the sawyers of logs had done their dirty work thoroughly; their acids and their sawdust poisoned and choked; their devastation turned the tree-clothed hill flanks to arid lumps of sand and rock.